Washington Institute for Near East Policy

The establishment of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) in 1985 greatly expanded the pro-Israel lobby's influence over policy as well. WINEP's founding director, Martin Indyk, had previously been research director of AIPAC which, then as now, focuses much of its efforts on Congress. Indyk developed WINEP into a highly effective think tank devoted to maintaining and strengthening the US-Israel alliance through advocacy in the media and lobbying the executive branch. Indyk is a major proponent of the two-state solution.

On the eve of the 1988 presidential elections, with the first Palestinian intifada underway, WINEP made its bid to become a major player in US Middle East policy discussions by issuing a report entitled "Building for Peace: An American Strategy for the Middle East." The report urged the incoming administration to "resist pressures for a procedural breakthrough (on Palestinian-Israeli peace issues) until conditions have ripened." Six members of the study group responsible for the report joined the first Bush administration, which adopted this stalemate recipe not to change until change was unavoidable. Hence, the US acceded to Israel's refusal to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization despite the PLO's recognition of Israel at the November 1988 session of the Palestine National Council.

When Israel became serious about attempting to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, it circumvented the US-sponsored negotiations in Washington (and the pro-Israel lobby) and spoke directly to representatives of the PLO in Oslo. The result was the 1993 Oslo Declaration of Principles.
 * Thus, the adoption of WINEP's policy recommendation to "resist pressures for a procedural breakthrough" by both the Bush and Clinton administrations delayed the start of meaningful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, contributed to the demonization of the PLO and multiplied the casualty rate of the first Palestinian intifada.

Despite what might reasonably be judged as a major policy failure, WINEP's influence grew, especially in the mass media. Its associates, especially deputy director Patrick Clawson, director for policy and planning Robert Satloff and senior fellow Michael Eisenstadt, appear frequently on television and radio talk shows as commentators on Middle East issues. Its board of advisors includes Mortimer Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, and Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic.

WINEP's advocacy extended to matters far beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Well before most Americans took note of radical Islam as a potential threat to their security, for instance, WINEP and its associates were promoting the notion that Israel is a reliable US ally against the spread of Islamism. After Israel expelled over 400 alleged Palestinian Islamist activists from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in December 1992, Israeli television Middle East analyst and WINEP associate Ehud Yaari wrote an op-ed in the New York Times summarizing his Hebrew television report of a vast US-based conspiracy to fund Hamas. WINEP's 1992 annual Soref Symposium "Islam and the US: Challenges for the Nineties" focused on whether or not Islam was a danger to the United States. At that event, Martin Indyk argued that the US ought not to encourage democracy in countries that were friendly to Washington, like Jordan and Egypt, and that political participation should be limited to secular parties. This recommendation seemed like a formula for ensuring that Islamist forces would forsake legal political action and engage in armed struggle - precisely what happened in Egypt from 1992 to 1997.

The Clinton administration was even more thoroughly colonized by WINEP associates than its predecessor. Eleven signatories of the final report of WINEP's 1992 commission on US-Israeli relations, "Enduring Partnership," joined the Clinton administration. Among them were National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, UN Ambassador and later Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Undersecretary of Commerce Stuart Eisenstat and the late Les Aspin, Clinton's first secretary of defense. Shortly after assuming office in 1993, the Clinton administration announced a policy of "dual containment" aimed at isolating Iran and Iraq. The principal formulator and spokesperson for that policy was Martin Indyk, in his new role as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council.

In the current Bush administration, however, WINEP's influence has been outflanked on the right by individuals linked to more monolithically neo-conservative and hawkish think tanks like the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). [excerpted from Beinin, op. cit.]


 * Washington Institute for Near East Policy: People

2005

 * Matthew Levitt, director of the Terrorism Research Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has been named to lead the Treasury Department office responsible for intelligence in the fight against terror financing and financial crimes, the research organization announced today. Dr. Levitt assumes his new post as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for intelligence and analysis on November 14, 2005. In that capacity, he will head the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which is part of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.[WINEP press release]

2005

 * John P. Hannah, a research fellow and deputy director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, was named on October 31, 2005, by Vice President Dick Cheney to be his national security adviser. Hannah and David S. Addington, who will serve as Cheney's chief of staff, are replacements for I. Lewis Scooter Libby who was indicted October 28, 2005.


 * Hannah was sourced by the Washington Post as having said "during a recent meeting that the administration considers 2007 'the year of Iran'" and indicating "that a U.S. attack was a real possibility.

Affiliations

 * AIPAC -- parent organization

Iran

 * Patrick Clawson, Deputy Director for Research
 * Mehdi Khalaji, Visiting Fellow
 * Matthew Levitt, Director, Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence
 * Raymond Tanter, Adjunct Scholar
 * Mohsen Sazegara, Visiting Fellow

Iraq

 * Soner Cagaptay, Director, Turkish Research Program
 * Michael Eisenstadt, Director, Military & Security Studies Program
 * Nazar Janabi, Next Generation Fellow
 * Michael Knights, Lafer International Fellow
 * Matthew Levitt, Director, Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence
 * Jeffrey White, Berrie Defense Fellow

Arab and Islamic Politics

 * Hassan Barari, Lafer International Fellow
 * J. Scott Carpenter, Keston Family Fellow
 * Mehdi Khalaji, Visiting Fellow
 * Martin Kramer, Wexler-Fromer Fellow
 * Matthew Levitt, Director, Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence
 * David Pollock, Visiting Fellow
 * Robert Satloff, Executive Director
 * David Schenker, Director, Arab Politics Program

Contact Details
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy 1828 L Street, NW, Suite 1050 Washington, DC 20036 Phone: 202-452-0650 Fax: 202-223-5364 Website: http://www.washingtoninstitute.org

Related SourceWatch

 * Former Trustee, Orna Shulman
 * Richard L. Plepler - Trustee
 * Robert C. McFarlane - Board member
 * Warren Christopher, former Secretary of State - Board member
 * Lawrence S. Eagleburger, former Secretary of State - Board member
 * Alexander Haig, former Secretary of State - Board member
 * Max M. Kampelman, former Senior Diplomat - Board member
 * Samuel W. Lewis, former U.S. ambassador to Israel - Board member
 * Edward Luttwak, Center for Strategic and International Studies - Board member
 * Michael Mandelbaum, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies - Board member
 * Robert McFarlane, former National Security Advisor - Board member
 * Martin Peretz, Editor in Chief and Chairman, New Republic - Board member
 * Richard Perle, former Assistant Secretary of Defense - Board member
 * James G. Roche, former Secretary of the Air Force - Board member
 * George P. Shultz, former Secretary of State - Board member
 * Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Secretary of Defense - Board member
 * R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence - Board member
 * Mortimer Zuckerman, Publisher, U.S. News and World Report - Board member

External Resources

 * Pro-Israel Hawks and the Second Gulf War by Joel Beinin, April 6, 2003. (Joel Beinin, a contributing editor of Middle East Report, is a professor of Middle East history at Stanford University.